CHAPTER XXIX 



STATION-PEOCEDUEES AND PEOCESSES 



A VOLUME on the pastoral industry that should con- 

 tain no chapter on the processes and procedures that 

 form the culmination of its activities would resemble 

 the proverbial play, with the chief part in it omitted. 

 And yet we feel, with the Roman historian, that such 

 topics are better left severely alone than inadequately 

 treated. The voluminous descriptive literature of the 

 station expressly and fully, and the best of the station 

 fictions incidentally, but with a still greater wealth of 

 illustrative detail, clearly describe or vividly paint 

 scenes that rank as distinctive features of bush-life. In 

 these they should be sought. A few points may never- 

 theless be noted, showing both the changes that time 

 has brought and the unchangeableness of things that 

 are revealed on a larger scale. 



Everything connected with the station passes through 

 an evolution that recapitulates a like development in 

 the Motherland. So recently as 1854, although New 

 South Wales had then been growing wool for more than 

 fifty years, the mode of sheep-washing was simple and 

 inexpensive, just as it was in England at the same time. 

 The fleece was placed on rough slabs and under a bark- 

 roof ; the wool-table was clumsy, and the wool-press 

 only a long lever, with a box attached to it. Now vast 

 improvements have been made. All implements have 

 been perfected, often at great expense. The wool-shed 

 on the huge run of Jondaryan, in Southern Queensland, 

 for example, cost as much as £5,000. Spout- and 



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